Lord Mayor's Blog 6
This week the City has hosted the Rotary International Convention. There are about 20,000 delegates and Birmingham is privileged to be the only City outside of the United States to have hosted the International Convention twice. This was my speech at the welcome breakfast.
"Lady Mayoress, Mr President, Directors, Trustees, Rotarians All, Distinguished Visitors. It is a great privilege that you have chosen Birmingham to host the prestigious Rotary International Convention. And we are equally delighted that this is your 100th International Convention - held here in the heart of England and, I cannot resist adding, that since Birmingham was the home of J.R.R. Tolkien in his formative years, right here in Middle-earth!
Your 100th convention in an unbroken sequence with delegates from 154 countries in attendance is a major milestone that you are clearly marking with what promises to be a terrific conference - the second that you have held in Birmingham and the fourth in this country - which makes us doubly proud.
I’ve read your programme book and I’m staggered at the scope and reach of the good works - great humanitarian endeavours in fact - that Rotary undertakes world-wide as well as the wide range of Fellowship activities. The value of volunteering and lasting friendship and its fruitfulness should never be underestimated.
From the longstanding drive to eliminate Polio in which Rotary plays such a prominent role, to the search for a more peaceful world; from the battle against HIV/AIDS and other dread diseases to active and imaginative engagement, including the Shelterbox initiative, in over 80 disasters worldwide and from blindness prevention to the improvement of literacy, truly, Rotary represents the people of the ‘Nations United’ in the best possible way.
And seldom have our societies had a greater need to re-establish and embed the Rotary ideal of service before self, which, standing alongside the very high ethical standards that you enshrine, is at the heart of what you are about and one of the core messages that you convey.
Furthermore, the idea that what is done should be useful (and I would add in some contexts even just understood) is essential in certain sectors of our economies.
The advancement of understanding between ethnic groups, the goal of cross-cultural projects and your encouragement of diversity of membership are other noble objectives - vitally important in today’s societies. And there are few better places giving evidence of progress than Birmingham - one of the truly cosmopolitan cities of the world.
Our city has grown over the centuries from its origins as the ‘home of the people of Beorma’, which is what the name ‘Birmingham’ means, welcoming and incorporating people from the four corners of the world, making this their home too, building their lives, contributing through work and culture and achieving their full potential.
To speak of home is to speak of family and friendship, and the family centred aspects of your programme are vitally important in societies today. I know that Rotary has impressive youth and educational exchange programmes. And training and mentoring young people is a very important part of what you do.
Birmingham has changed since the Industrial Revolution and the times of Boulton and Watt, when we were rightly known as the Workshop of the World, to the International City that we are today, proud of our industry and commerce, our role in the Arts - some of which you will be enjoying - and in education with three Universities attracting students internationally to world class courses and the cutting edge research they undertake.
And just as Rotary is a can-do organisation so Birmingham is a ‘can-do’ city where the sun is always shining - although we may sometimes have to rely on metaphor!
Indeed, I know that Rotary has done great work in the fields of health and medicine including the fights against Polio, tuberculosis and cancer amongst many other important areas, and I am old enough to remember when both polio and tuberculosis afflicted the community where I once lived and the suffering that both diseases bring.
Close to my own heart is an aim to combat Pancreatic Cancer, because while there’s been progress with many cancers, for cancer of the pancreas the five-year survival rate following diagnosis forty years ago stood at 3%.Today that rate is - well, just 3%.
Yet the disease is treatable if it can be detected early enough, and I aim, through the Lord Mayor’s Charity, to support research, conducted at our outstanding School of Cancer Sciences at the University of Birmingham, into improved diagnostic methods.
While I’m not yet a member of Rotary I am looking forward to being inducted into membership very soon, and I can however already claim a sort of tenuous geographical connection.
This is on the grounds that I lived for a year in Evanston Illinois, which of course is the home of Rotary International World Headquarters. Admittedly though, this was quite some time ago now - in fact it was when JFK was president!
And President Kennedy once said that ‘individuals can make a difference and should try’ and Jane Goodall who is addressing the convention has said that every individual can make a difference every day by recognising personal responsibility and the ability to affect beneficial change through our conduct as consumers, through lifestyle change, through being active and engaged. And to that I’m sure that we would add, through the extension of friendship.
Rotary, it is abundantly clear, in readily taking up those responsibilities, and through actively applying your energies both individually and collectively, brings massive beneficial changes right across the globe making, so to say, ‘a world of difference’. And small things count too - remember the saying - no drops, no ocean.
Which is why we welcome you so very warmly on behalf of the City of Birmingham - and our good neighbours in Solihull and Warwickshire - and we wish you every success both in your International Convention here, and in all the years to come."
"Lady Mayoress, Mr President, Directors, Trustees, Rotarians All, Distinguished Visitors. It is a great privilege that you have chosen Birmingham to host the prestigious Rotary International Convention. And we are equally delighted that this is your 100th International Convention - held here in the heart of England and, I cannot resist adding, that since Birmingham was the home of J.R.R. Tolkien in his formative years, right here in Middle-earth!
Your 100th convention in an unbroken sequence with delegates from 154 countries in attendance is a major milestone that you are clearly marking with what promises to be a terrific conference - the second that you have held in Birmingham and the fourth in this country - which makes us doubly proud.
I’ve read your programme book and I’m staggered at the scope and reach of the good works - great humanitarian endeavours in fact - that Rotary undertakes world-wide as well as the wide range of Fellowship activities. The value of volunteering and lasting friendship and its fruitfulness should never be underestimated.
From the longstanding drive to eliminate Polio in which Rotary plays such a prominent role, to the search for a more peaceful world; from the battle against HIV/AIDS and other dread diseases to active and imaginative engagement, including the Shelterbox initiative, in over 80 disasters worldwide and from blindness prevention to the improvement of literacy, truly, Rotary represents the people of the ‘Nations United’ in the best possible way.
And seldom have our societies had a greater need to re-establish and embed the Rotary ideal of service before self, which, standing alongside the very high ethical standards that you enshrine, is at the heart of what you are about and one of the core messages that you convey.
Furthermore, the idea that what is done should be useful (and I would add in some contexts even just understood) is essential in certain sectors of our economies.
The advancement of understanding between ethnic groups, the goal of cross-cultural projects and your encouragement of diversity of membership are other noble objectives - vitally important in today’s societies. And there are few better places giving evidence of progress than Birmingham - one of the truly cosmopolitan cities of the world.
Our city has grown over the centuries from its origins as the ‘home of the people of Beorma’, which is what the name ‘Birmingham’ means, welcoming and incorporating people from the four corners of the world, making this their home too, building their lives, contributing through work and culture and achieving their full potential.
To speak of home is to speak of family and friendship, and the family centred aspects of your programme are vitally important in societies today. I know that Rotary has impressive youth and educational exchange programmes. And training and mentoring young people is a very important part of what you do.
Birmingham has changed since the Industrial Revolution and the times of Boulton and Watt, when we were rightly known as the Workshop of the World, to the International City that we are today, proud of our industry and commerce, our role in the Arts - some of which you will be enjoying - and in education with three Universities attracting students internationally to world class courses and the cutting edge research they undertake.
And just as Rotary is a can-do organisation so Birmingham is a ‘can-do’ city where the sun is always shining - although we may sometimes have to rely on metaphor!
Indeed, I know that Rotary has done great work in the fields of health and medicine including the fights against Polio, tuberculosis and cancer amongst many other important areas, and I am old enough to remember when both polio and tuberculosis afflicted the community where I once lived and the suffering that both diseases bring.
Close to my own heart is an aim to combat Pancreatic Cancer, because while there’s been progress with many cancers, for cancer of the pancreas the five-year survival rate following diagnosis forty years ago stood at 3%.Today that rate is - well, just 3%.
Yet the disease is treatable if it can be detected early enough, and I aim, through the Lord Mayor’s Charity, to support research, conducted at our outstanding School of Cancer Sciences at the University of Birmingham, into improved diagnostic methods.
While I’m not yet a member of Rotary I am looking forward to being inducted into membership very soon, and I can however already claim a sort of tenuous geographical connection.
This is on the grounds that I lived for a year in Evanston Illinois, which of course is the home of Rotary International World Headquarters. Admittedly though, this was quite some time ago now - in fact it was when JFK was president!
And President Kennedy once said that ‘individuals can make a difference and should try’ and Jane Goodall who is addressing the convention has said that every individual can make a difference every day by recognising personal responsibility and the ability to affect beneficial change through our conduct as consumers, through lifestyle change, through being active and engaged. And to that I’m sure that we would add, through the extension of friendship.
Rotary, it is abundantly clear, in readily taking up those responsibilities, and through actively applying your energies both individually and collectively, brings massive beneficial changes right across the globe making, so to say, ‘a world of difference’. And small things count too - remember the saying - no drops, no ocean.
Which is why we welcome you so very warmly on behalf of the City of Birmingham - and our good neighbours in Solihull and Warwickshire - and we wish you every success both in your International Convention here, and in all the years to come."
